


Talk of Spirits

by silveryink



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aang is a cinnamon roll, Blue Spirit Zuko (Avatar), Gaang (Avatar), Gaang (Avatar) as Family, Gen, Humor, Light Angst, Theatre Kid Zuko, Toph Beifong and Zuko are Siblings, Toph Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:07:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25287307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveryink/pseuds/silveryink
Summary: In which Team Avatar find out who exactly the Blue Spirit is.
Relationships: Aang & Zuko (Avatar), The Gaang & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 44
Kudos: 1403
Collections: avatar tingz





	Talk of Spirits

**Author's Note:**

> July 16 2020 - UPDATE: I was initially going to start writing this as a series of somewhat related oneshots surrounding canon, but after reviewing the drafts for the following chapters I've decided to post them as separate stories, because they could use a little more in-depth exploration of themes than I might have had in a multichapter fic.
> 
> Previously titled "Come of Age (with our young nation)". This is not a repost under a new name, but I do have another story planned for which it fits better, hence the change.
> 
> The second half is inspired by [this amazing Tumblr post](https://silveryinkystar.tumblr.com/post/620284744184250368/para-cosmic-derinthescarletpescatarian).

As expected, the Ember Island Players had been awful.

Zuko doesn’t know why he ever hoped _The Boy in the Iceberg_ would have been otherwise. He can’t help but rant to Toph, who’s sweet enough for once to listen without interruption.

“And what was up with me guarding Aang in the Pohuai Fortress, anyway? That bit with the Blue Spirit made no sense!”

Aang snorts, not breaking stride as he turns to face him. “I mean, it was a bit embarrassing on the spot, but in hindsight, it’s pretty funny.”

Zuko blinks, and grins. “Yeah, I get it. I can’t be in two places at once.”

The two of them didn’t seem to notice the others staring at them.

“When did _that_ happen?” Katara asks, and Aang cringes at her icy tone. “I thought that was fake, like me being attracted to Zuko.”

Zuko scrunches his nose up at the reminder. Katara’s great, but he was certainly not attracted to her either. Aang looks weirdly relieved by the admission, and Zuko files that away to investigate later.

“Oh – um…”

“This seems like another of those stories,” Toph grumbles. “Like all the ones with that Zhao guy.”

“Oh, this one involves him too,” Aang tells her.

“I thought _Zuko_ had captured you?”

“ _No_!” Katara appears to be startled by the outburst, and he backtracks. “They got that wrong. I wasn’t the one who captured Aang that time – that was Zhao.”

“Huh,” Sokka muses aloud. “So where do _you_ come in? And how come we never heard of this from you, Aang?”

“That was the time you guys got sick,” he says, as though that explains anything.

“You mean when you tried to get us to suck on frogs?” Sokka asks dryly.

“Yep,” Aang mutters, reddening.

“Yeah, I never really got that. What was up with the frogs? You were so insistent on getting them that you nearly blew our cover.”

“Wait – hold up,” Suki interrupts. “I want to hear the whole thing from the start. So, from the top.”

“Okay, um… all of us had just gotten out of this big storm – I remember you were there, too, Zuko – and Sokka got sick from the rain because he’d been stuck outside for too long. Then _Katara_ fell sick too, she probably caught it from Sokka, and I wanted to find something that would cure it. So I went to this herbalist in the nearby village while they rested with Appa, and she said that sucking on frozen frogs would help.”

“Gross,” Toph comments.

“And when I found some frogs, I was caught by some Fire Nation warriors. They used arrows, which was weird ‘cause they mostly only use firebending or stuff like swords and clubs.”

“Those were Yuyan Archers,” Zuko explains. “They’re an elite force trained separately from the rest of the Fire Nation Army, and Zhao was going to have them guard the Avatar once he was captured. I always wanted to be one when I was a kid,” he adds.

Aang grins and continues with his tale. “They took me to their fortress, the Pohuai Stronghold? Yeah, and Zhao gave me this big speech about bringing me to the Fire Lord – then the ice around the frogs started melting and the Blue Spirit broke me out before I could save them.”

“I’m going to stop you there,” Toph says with a frown. “Where does Sparky come in all of this?”

Zuko opens his mouth to speak, and closes it shut. “Well…”

“No _way,_ ” she breathes, and punches him in the arm. “You _never_ talk about doing cool stuff like this!”

“Uh…” Zuko isn’t sure of how to react to that. “I’m… sorry?”

“Hmph. I suppose you should catch the others up.”

Okay. He can do that. “This needs a bit of a jump back to earlier that evening,” he says. “I saw a notice in the town that the Avatar had been captured, and obviously that couldn’t stand, since _I_ had to bring him home in order to restore my honour. If Zhao got to do it before I could, then I couldn’t return to the Fire Nation for the rest of my life. So I took things into my own hands.

“Of course, there was the problem of being too noticeable. Zhao knew me, and anyone who’s seen me before would be able to give my identity away by my scar alone. Not to mention, even if I could have broken Aang out easily, I’d have zero chance of getting him to cooperate if he knew who I was. Luckily for me, I had a theatre mask that somehow found its way to my pack, and a pair of very nice blades that wouldn’t give my firebending away.”

Toph cackles. Zuko isn’t too embarrassed to admit that he’s a bit scared of her, sometimes. This is a healthy sort of scared, though. He’s never been afraid of her the way Azula frightened him sometimes, even though Toph is just as capable of beating him up as she is. The thought of her doing so never really crossed his mind, even after the time he accidentally burned her feet. He thinks that’s a good thing, but it’s not like he has some sort of frame of reference to go by.

“Wait a minute,” Sokka says, shaking his head a few times to clear it out. They’re back at the abandoned holiday manor now, so he can afford to be loud. “ _You’re_ the Blue Spirit?!”

He waves a hand blandly, and Suki giggles. “Why don’t we let them finish the story?” she suggests.

Aang picks up from there. “Obviously, I didn’t know who the Blue Spirit was, so I was afraid they were going to kill me before they broke my chains. It was a bit creepy,” he says to Zuko, “because you didn’t _talk_ either. I mean, I get why, but… creepy.”

“Glad to know,” he says dryly. Toph snorts. “While we were escaping, Aang here decided that it was a good idea to yell about frogs and nearly give away our position. In an elite-trained Fire Nation stronghold. Somehow, we made it to the gates. We nearly climbed outside when someone saw us scaling the wall, and cut the ropes.”

“So Zhao came running with the rest of the archers, and Zuko was _awesome_ in taking out those arrows with his swords before they could hit us. Then Zhao said to be careful because they needed me alive, and Zuko put his blades to my throat.”

Zuko’s kind of happy that he made amends with Katara, because if this had gotten out before their life-changing field trip, he knows that he wouldn’t have survived her glare (and what would probably come with it).

“I forced their hand,” Zuko explains. “Aang wasn’t in danger of being shot, and until we got to a safe distance, neither was I.”

“But you _were_ injured,” Aang points out. That’s fair. “That archer knocked you out, and your mask slipped off. That’s how I found out it was you.”

Zuko acknowledges it with a nod. “Thankfully, I healed enough before Zhao could interrogate me. It wouldn’t have been pretty if he’d figured it out. He _did_ , in the end, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Dual dao blades aren’t all that common in the Fire Nation, but Earth Kingdom soldiers _do_ use them. It might have just been that one guy in Ba Sing Se, actually. All the others I saw either used their bending, or maces and clubs.”

“Huh. So you just took some guy’s swords in Ba Sing Se? When did _that_ happen? I know you didn’t have weapons during Azula’s coup,” Sokka comments.

“It was before that, actually. Jet came into the teashop my Uncle and I worked at and tried to tell the soldiers we were firebenders, and he tried to force me to bend when he attacked me. I just borrowed that soldier’s swords and fought back.”

“This is the same Jet we all met too, yeah? The one brainwashed by the Dai Li?”

Zuko feels queasy. The play did show something along those lines, but he never really knew what had happened to the other boy. Despite how viscerally he seemed to hate the Fire Nation, he’d hoped that Jet could have found a new start in Ba Sing Se, like himself and Uncle.

“Did that actually happen?” he asks quietly. “I saw them take him away, but never really thought about it.”

“According to Smellerbee, he was missing for a few weeks, then showed up talking about _no war in Ba Sing Se_. We figured that he was brainwashed like Joo Dee, and broke the conditioning.”

His stomach churns, and the rest of the chatter washes over him indistinctly. It had been his and Uncle’s safety or Jet’s, and at the time he’d been more worried about being discovered by the authority than the fate of some guy who’d spoken to them on the ferry. He hadn’t considered what Jet would have faced for his actions, and this was worse than anything he could think of.

Even _his_ fate is a sure death sentence if he’s caught. It’s almost merciful compared to… _this_.

Toph squeezes his hand. “You okay?” she murmurs. He realizes he must have been staring, but the others have broken into their own conversations. “You know that there wasn’t anything you could have done about Jet, yeah? I mean, you guys were working in a _tea shop_ in the Earth Kingdom, not breaking any laws. Except when you were Blue Spirit-ing in the night,” she adds with a truly evil grin. “That sounded pretty cool when I heard the rumours.”

“By the way, what happened to Zhao after the Moon Spirit fiasco?” Sokka asks, stumbling over the words. Zuko faintly remembers him saying, _my first girlfriend turned into the moon_ , and supposes that the Ember Island Players must have gotten that right.

“Yeah, I thought he’d be committed to chasing us,” Katara muses. “He was almost as determined as you, Zuko.”

“He caught up to us a few times, too,” Aang recalls. “I wonder what he’s doing now.”

Zuko can’t take this anymore. There’s a churning in his gut, like he swallowed a live rat-viper. “The giant glowing fish ate him,” he bites out.

A silence falls over the group.

_“What?_ ”

“I’m sorry, did I not hear that right? ‘Cause it sounded like-”

“The Ocean Spirit ate him?” Aang cries, anguished. Aanguished?

Zuko mentally slaps himself. He doesn’t need to think of bad wordplay like Sokka, he needs to get a grip on his thoughts. “I tried to reach out for him, but he refused to take my hand.”

Katara seems to catch his distress, and gently takes his hand. “Some people are like that,” she says sadly. “They’re so caught up in their hate that they’d rather see themselves face a terrible fate than admit they need help from someone else.”

He nods. “That’s… yeah.” He squeezes her arm gently before letting go.

“Did the Ocean Spirit swallow him before or after I returned?” Aang asks, sounding more and more agitated by the word.

“I’m not sure,” he admits, even though it might not be the right thing to say. “I was more distracted by trying to find Uncle and a way to escape, since the giant magical koi destroyed our fleet.”

He feels a pang of grief in his heart for his crew. He hadn’t searched for their records in the palace before joining Aang and the rest of his friends, mostly because he didn’t think he could take it if they hadn’t survived. Looking up the fate of the Forty-First division had been bad enough.

“I think we’re all still hopping over the fact that Sparky here is the Blue Spirit? The guy who stole from the kind of rich people who deserved it and occasionally gave his goods to the poor? I mean, you’re practically a legend in the Earth Kingdom. Half the servants back home were convinced you were fake.”

“Hang on – _steals from the rich and gives to the poor_? When did _that_ happen?”

“Uncle and I fled to the Earth Kingdom after the invasion of the Northern Water Tribes when Azula found us in the colonies. We’d been resting in some sort of resort and didn’t have much to live off on the road. I did what I had to do,” he adds with a shrug. He never really felt bad about his days as a highway robber, but it would make for an excellent plot for a play.

Hopefully one that _wasn’t_ performed by the Ember Island Players.

“So was your mask, like, yay big?” Sokka stood on his toes and raised his hand as high as he could.

Zuko smacked his forehead, not dignifying it with a response.

“ _No_ , Sokka,” Aang sighs, “It’s a regular theatre mask like the ones we wore during the Fire Days Festival.”

Zuko perks up on hearing the name of his favourite holiday. Granted, they hadn’t really celebrated it much in the palace, but the few times he’d gone with Mom, Uncle and Lu Ten, he’d absolutely _adored_ the firebending displays.

“Did you watch the fire-dancers?” he asks excitedly, and everyone falls silent once more to stare at him. He doesn’t notice the smile on his face until it’s slipping away, but Suki speaks up before it fades entirely.

“I’d like to hear about this festival, actually, since, you know, I’ve never been.”

“Of course,” Aang says, looping an arm through hers before dragging her, Katara, and Sokka off to the huge living room filled with blankets and pillows that they’ve been using as a communal bedroom. He glances back and gestures for Zuko to follow with Toph, and he does. Or at least he plans to, but Toph tugs his arm gently to stop him.

“You know they weren’t staring at you cause they thought you being excited about this festival was weird, right?”

He flinches at the spot-on observation. “Yeah,” he says, taking a moment to think about it. This isn’t the royal palace, where he’d be ridiculed for liking something other than combat firebending and winning the blasted war. He could probably ramble on about the cute turtleduck family from his childhood and have to put up with minimal teasing. And even _that_ would mostly be good-natured and not mocking, like Azula’s taunts.

Spirits, he’d even talked non-stop about his uncle for a week since they’d accepted him into the group and they hadn’t batted an eyelid or even thought of teasing him for it. There’s absolutely _nothing_ stopping him from repeating Noren’s soliloquy from _Love Amongst the Dragons_ to them, he realises with rising glee. Or any other monologue, for that matter. It’s not like he destroyed the theatre scrolls in his room.

“Yeah,” he repeats, certainty burning in his chest like a warm hearthfire, and lets Toph lead him inside the manor.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for reading!


End file.
